Ampersand's Story
by WingedCheetah
Summary: The Truth set her free, and through it, she seeks another.
1. Introduction

HOST: user AMPERSAND has entered. (06.44.45)  
  
HOST: user TRINITY has entered. (06.44.52)  
  
TRINITY: Drop successful.  
  
AMPERSAND: So now you'll be able to find my brother?  
  
TRINITY: I will try. This information will help. Now we must discuss payment.  
  
AMPERSAND: Name your price.  
  
TRINITY: All I ask is that you meet with an associate of mine.  
  
AMPERSAND: I thought I made it clear that there'd be no person to person correspondence.  
  
TRINITY: How badly do you want me to find your brother?  
  
AMPERSAND: I am not in a position to trust you, how do I know this is not a set up?  
  
TRINITY: You said once that you felt more awake when you dreamt. How do you know that life is not a set up?  
  
AMPERSAND: Name your price, or you will forfeit this job and I will get another source.  
  
TRINITY: 0300 hours, in front of the Westmarch Building on 4th and Allen. He'll be waiting.  
  
HOST: user TRINITY has exited. (06.45.32)  
  
HOST user AMPERSAND has exited. (06.59.30) 


	2. Chapter One A Door Opens

Alyssa crowded around her door handle as she closed it, securing the string in the door jamb that would alert her if anyone entered her room while she was at school. She had come to some strange habits in trying to keep her life as private as possible. It wasn't that she was doing anything illegal, or that she was ashamed of any part of it, but she just rather preferred her life to remain her own.   
  
Pammy and Yalf, her parent's two shelties, tore past her in their early morning chase. She followed them into the kitchen, where she lifted a piece of toast from her father's plate and took a swallow of grapefruit juice from her mother's glass.   
  
"Alyssa, I've set a place for you; why don't you sit and have a leisurely breakfast?" Her mother pleaded.   
  
"Because I prefer a leisurely walk."   
  
Her father rustled the newspaper in turning a page. "I'll drive you to school, it's right on my way to work."   
  
The door slammed in response.   
  
--------------------------------   
  
Alyssa didn't hate her parents. She didn't despise them or wish them dead, and she didn't spend consuming amounts of time plotting her getaway. Her parents simply bored her. They were so preoccupied with grades, social standing, personal hygiene, and what not, which were only the most basic and obvious of the modern human instinct.   
  
Alyssa liked to think she was beyond that. She brushed long, greasy hair from her face as she walked along at a fair clip. Her mish-mosh of thrift store clothes, bought out of preference and not need, made her a dark, stale blemish against the background of late summer, early fall. She took little notice of her surroundings as she made her way towards the prison of conformity and medial success that was her high school. The only time she ever felt any positive regard towards it was in the morning when the only people to be found were Lt. Sanchez, who never seemed to leave, and the janitor Mr. Garlend.   
  
Alyssa wouldn't mind them as parents. Not that she could see them together, Sanchez being a gung-ho lesbian and Garlend ... well, he was just Garlend and that's all there was to it. They made stimulating, intelligent conversation. Not always of the sane type, especially in Garlend's case, but there was wisdom to be found if one was patient enough.   
  
Most people, as Alyssa had found, were not.   
  
Which didn't bother her any as long as they left her alone. Of course, that would never happen. She had always been a target of either prank or pity; people who's IQs were lower than their age tried to bash her down in order to raise themselves up, and spoiled brats who felt everyone should share a lavish life tried to 'boost' Alyssa's self-esteem.   
  
She found it to be too much effort to tell them off, explain that their own egos were inconsequential to her, and that she didn't give a flying fuck what anyone else's opinoin of her was. Okay, so this last bit she actually said. She liked the reaction achieved by hurling out a phrase such as 'flying fuck' to a group of conservatives.   
  
High school was still an annoyance, though. It was hardly one month into her senior year and she felt she was bleeding at the bit from straining for so long to get loose.   
  
It hadn't always been like this, she reminded herself. It hadn't always been that hard. When Robert was around, her older brother, he'd been the buffer between Alyssa and their parents. Sure, she had to put up with them complaining about her grades, her behavior and everything, but there were times in which life was actually pleasant. Robert was not boring; Robert knew what was going on.   
  
Perhaps he knew a little too well?   
  
He would have been gone two years ago this coming May. Where to no one knew. After the initial shock of his disappearance wore off, and acceptance to his being gone had settled into to everyone but Alyssa, her parents could focus the whole of their attention on their 'darling little daughter'.   
  
Thus the string in the door jamb. Her room was fine, clean even. But her parents wouldn't understand. They wouldn't understand the art she had hung up on the walls, the colors she had chosen, even the setup of the room would be a foreign, incomprehensible concept to them. Therefore, in cutting her life off from them so they wouldn't have to bear the confusion and misconceptions, she was a loner, mal-adjusted, angsty even.   
  
She hated that word.   
  
"Morning, Miss Soundheim!"   
  
"Morning, Sanchez."   
  
Sanchez held the door open that she had just unlocked. "Garlend opened the library in case you wanted to study."   
  
Alyssa shook her head; "Good god why would I want to study? I'm trying to pass, not impress anyone!"   
  
"Well," Sanchez added, "There are a lot more things to study than math and science, you know."   
  
"What are you getting at?"   
  
"Nothing, just that I wonder where you'll wander off to once you're free."   
  
"Follow Robert's trail, of course."   
  
  
  
"Was your friend able to help you?"   
  
Alyssa shook her head. "Asked too much."   
  
"That surprises me. Weren't you the one that said 'death alone will stop me from finding him' when he first went missing?"   
  
"Yeah, but if it's something I can avoid I'd rather do so and continue than flail futilely on the blade of a weapon in an unknown hand."   
  
-------------------------------------   
  
The day was a long one. Alyssa had forgotten to grab extra change, and so her mid-morning caffeine jolt was unattainable. She doodled in an attempt to stay awake, and at first the mindless lines and squiggles were intriguing, but the farther and farther she separated her conscious thought from her hand, the more the lines began to take shape. By 5th period, she had scrawled out a name she had never heard, seen, or uttered before. Yet, she felt a strange connection to it, a sort of premonition.   
  
Her arm hurt.   
  
Why did her arm hurt? It wasn't supposed to hurt. It hadn't hurt like this before.   
  
------------------------------------   
  
Alyssa slowly opened her eyes. Slowly because they felt heavy and unwilling to open, and because of the bright fluorescent light above.   
  
"Mike, she's awake!"   
  
"Alyssa? Alyssa, can you hear me?"   
  
Alyssa sat up, quickly and startled at first, but then her head boomed at her to slow down and she painfully obeyed.   
  
"Where am I?" She hadn't meant to speak, but somehow that first question had fallen out.   
  
"Oh good god, Mike; she's got amnesia!"   
  
"Honey ..."   
  
"Oh geez, I do *not* have amnesia!" Alyssa snapped in pain and frustration. "I've got a fucking pounding headache and what the hell happened to my arm?" She was just now noticing the gauze bandage that ran from wrist to elbow on her right arm. There was a slight pink line from some unknown wound that was about five inches long.   
  
"Teacher said you fainted, caught your arm on one of the iron baskets on another desk." Her father explained. "You also have a slight concussion."   
  
"Oh isn't that just fucking beautiful?" Alyssa said plainly, unraveling the bandage to look at the stitched gash.   
  
"Honey ..." Her mother pleaded.   
  
"I'll be alright, Mom." Alyssa said, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. "What time is it?"   
  
"About 7:50." Her father replied. "The doctor will probably want to look you over once more, make sure it's just a slight concussion and not a serious one, and he'll probably let you go for the night."   
  
"He'd better." Alyssa said, still looking at her wound. She didn't like the idea of being unconscious while this all happened.   
  
"Honey," Her mother said, a weak, quiet voice with a slight tremor. "Who's Morpheus?"   
  
Alyssa shook her head, hardly even listening, as she re-wrapped her arm.   
  
"His name was in your notebook."   
  
"There are a lot of names in my notebook, Mother. Machiavelli, Dante, Shostakovich, King George the XIII."   
  
At that moment the doctor entered and introduced himself briefly to Alyssa before doing some cursory checks to make sure she was safe to go home. Alyssa grudgingly obeyed if only to speed the process, and was soon changed and pulling her coat as her parents conversed with the doctor on the other side of the screen.   
  
Alyssa picked up her notebook, which her mother had been holding separate from the book bag, and looked at the name scratched out in blunt pencil; Morpheus. She felt she should reconsider her opinion about meeting with Trinity's contact.   
  
"Lets go, Alyssa! Dinner's out there somewhere, and it's up to you to decide where we search for it!" Her dad called. That was his way of saying they were treating her. There were only two reasons you're ever treated to a dinner out with the parents; because you conquered something, or because something conquered you. Alyssa had the strange feeling that she hadn't even dented the surface of being conquered. She shoved her notebook into the bag, shouldered it on her good arm, and then pushed the curtain aside.   
  
"All set." She said.   
  
As they reached the hallway with the elevators, Alyssa was aware of someone watching her. She glanced back, and for a single moment caught a well dressed, stark, business-like man looking intently in her direction. The focus of his gaze could not be determined through his sunglasses, but Alyssa was more than certain he'd been staring right into her eyes.   
  
--------------------------------------   
  
0217   
  
Alyssa slid out of bed, gingerly rubbing her arm. As soon as she had gotten back from dinner, where she enjoyed a very nice steak, she had tried finding information on Morpheus or Trinity. Dead ends. That, and all the typing had aggravated her new wound. She had only just stumbled on Trinity when searching for someone else, and so concluded that both of these were the type of people you could never find unless you weren't looking for them and they were looking for you.   
  
Of course, that made her wonder why they were looking for her in the first place.   
  
She dressed, pulling her hair into a haphazard ponytail so it wouldn't block her sight as she rode her bike into town. It was raining. She pulled on a jacket and secured the hood, and then stepped as quietly as she could through the house and out the back of the garage, taking her bike with her.   
  
0252   
  
The bike was slanted against a young tree, the wheels chained to the fence around the sapling. Alyssa sat hunched on the covered stoop to the Westmarch Financial Institution. She had let her hair out, and it hung in dank, dirty lengths in front of her face. To occupy herself, she played music in her head, humming only slightly and periodically.   
  
0302   
  
She'd almost finished her third song when a cellular phone rang. She was surprised to find that it was coming from her jacket pocket, and dug through past wrappers and receipts to find it. She hesitated before answering;   
  
"Hello?"   
  
"The meet will not happen there."   
  
"Then why'd you tell me it would?" She snapped. She was talking to a woman, and could only presume it was Trinity.   
  
"Because I didn't expect you to be bugged. There's not much I can explain under the circumstances."   
  
"Like fuck there is, I showed up, so you had better do your end of the bargain and find my brother!"   
  
"Your brother is not the issue here." Trinity said, dismissing it.   
  
"My brother --"   
  
"Your brother will be found, but will you?" Alyssa paused.   
  
The line went dead.   
  
"Fuck!" Alyssa swore, snapping the phone shut and shoving it back in her pocket. The rain was coming down harder now, getting closer and closer to the definition of a torrential downpour. Shaking her head and verbally running through every curse word she knew in several languages she'd picked up, she unlocked her bike, and started the trek home through the wet. She hadn't gotten far when lights threw her shadow against the rain, a car had turned a corner onto the road she was on. She pulled to the side in courtesy, still cussing up a storm of her own, when the phone rang again.   
  
Alyssa was annoyed. She let it ring. She hated being wet, she hated biking in the wet especially, and she hated incessant repeated noises, like a cheerleading squad running through the halls the Friday before a major game. She also hated incompetent drivers, like the obvious one that was still behind her and hadn't yet even attempted to pass her.   
  
The phone wouldn't give. Neither would the rain, or the piece-of-shit thing behind her. There was only one she could do anything about. She answered the phone.   
  
"Turn left."   
  
"What?"   
  
  
  
"Left, NOW!"   
  
Alyssa, quickly glancing over her shoulder to make sure the dumb driver wasn't going to attempt to pass her now, wrenched the bike around and down an alleyway.   
  
"Right." The person on the phone said. It was male. Definitely not the person from before.   
  
  
  
"Listen --"   
  
"Right, unless you want them to catch you!" The car had pulled into the alleyway. Alyssa wrenched the bike right. It was getting difficult to maneuver the bike, and the phone, in the wet, in a chase, all at the same time.   
  
"Left."   
  
She went left.   
  
  
  
"Hard left."   
  
She went hard left. Then right. Then left again. Then she dropped the bike and, with the phone still plastered to her head, ducked into the back of an apartment building and made her way towards the top floor, where the voice had said he'd be waiting for her.   
  
She stopped. She was no longer being followed. "Almost there." The man said.   
  
"This is a set up." Alyssa said, more for herself than anyone else, but it was out loud, so she had to stick with it.   
  
"I will show you the real set up if you choose."   
  
  
  
"You hired them, didn't you?"   
  
"They are employed by the Matrix ..."   
  
"You hired them to chase me off course, to get me lost. That way I'm more vulnerable. They're with you."   
  
  
  
"You don't understand."   
  
"I don't need to." She hung up.   
  
0413   
  
Alyssa collapsed on her bed, wet, tired, and with a thousand thoughts running through her head. After she spent a moment catching her breath, she shed her soaking clothes and sat at her desk, nothing in front of her. She let everything run through her mind's eye again, listening to conversations, dwelling on the inflections and nuances of the two people she'd talked to over the phone. She went back to her jacket and dug the phone out, then set it on her desk.   
  
Strange. All so very strange. One part seemed to jump out at her more than anything else; I didn't expect you to be bugged.   
  
"Bugged ..." She said it herself, and suddenly two images popped into her head. With a certain sick determination, she ran to the hall closet, grabbed a clean towel, and then barricaded herself in the bathroom with the towel and several washcloths, a compact mirror, an extra lamp, several household utensils soaking in scalding hot water, a glass of cold water and a bottle of household painkillers with the determination not to indulge more than the recommended dosage.   
  
She started off by taking two pills and waiting. She knew she couldn't wait long, because her parents would be up by six, but this was also something she refused to do later. It was now. Not never, but now.   
  
She took off the bandage, and blotted the wound with a damp cloth. A little part of her mind kept trying to tell her how crazy she was, how absolutely insane and stupid even the idea of doing what she was now attempting, but she ignored it. A sense of survival kept her going through the pain and the sight. Her mother's yellow towel scheme had never seemed so bright and counterfeit as when it was spotted with dark blood.   
  
She felt sick. She rinsed her good hand off, took another two pills, and slapped her face in an attempt to wake up.   
  
0630   
  
Alyssa sat on the bathroom counter, slumped against the mirror. Her right arm was now wrapped in a large towel which was largely stained with blood. The bottle was overturned, a few remaining pills scattered on counter and floor. Blood dotted everything.   
  
She seemed very happy with herself, sitting there, doped, pained, and faint, but happy. She was regarding a small, metallic object she held gingerly in her left hand. There had been a light when she had first pulled it out, but that light had long since dimmed.   
  
"Thought you could stop me, didn't you?" She said weakly with that disturbed smile. "Whatever it is they want me to find, I'll find it. Make no mistake about that." As her weakened body succumbed to the loss of blood, her hand dropped; the metal object slipped from her fingers, and was lost down the drain. 


End file.
